Los Angeles daily herald., 1887-02-26
ABOUT DIAMONDS.
History of this Precious stone,
and Where Found.

anu W mere Il FOuh0s
1t was pleasant fancy of writer in
the CornhiH Magazine to argue for the
plauslbllity OF the fairy story of the
princess from whose lips .fell diamonds,
both in speaking and in singing, and
even in silence" when she merely
smiled. "For, consider" he says, Into
what does the diamond blaze, when, on
combustion. the spirit of the gem leaps
upward home again to its parent, the
sun; into what but carbon. acid gasg-
that carbon dioride of the chemist
which attends the combustion of every
fire and gas burner, the decomposition Of
every vegetable, which is exhaled in
every breath we BREATHE The same
writer also utters the less pleasing but
equally striking thought that "the
chimney.sweep is covered by that which,
under happier auspices, would be jewels. !"
The diamond is mentioned very aecient.
ly in literature. Jupiter, accord.
ing to classical mythology, was aux.
ious to make men forget the
days he had spent among them,
and. finding that one man-Diamond of
Crete-remembered him, turned him
into a stone-not a very credible story of
the origin of the gem, but men of sci.
ence in the nineteenth century are not
much nearer to knowing the truth ON
the subject. The Greeks call the stone
adamas, the indomitable or unchapge-
able, and from this has come down our
word adamantine, and, after the letters
have undergone changes of kind
that are not rare in the growth of
language. our name of the stone
itself. But long before the Greeks
had emerged from the darkness of the
mythic age, the diamond was made,
among the Hebrews. the peculiar jewel
of the tribe of Zebulon; and Aaron's
breastplate, when he was dressed in his
prlestly robes, was adorned in the second
of the four rows of its setting with
precious stones--with an emerald, sap.
phire, and a diamond; and jeremiah,
when the Greeks were just getting to be
known, rebuking the misgoings of his
people, said, "rhe sin of Judah is writ
ten with pen of iron and with tie
point of diamond"
But, although the ancients considered
the diamond indestructible, and were
capable OF trying the most daring exper.
iments with it, no specimen that is
known to have belonged to them has
come down to us. Some persons sup.
pose that the Koh.i.nor is five thousand
years old. as mans possession, but no
one knows or can trace its history back
with certainty for more than few cen.
turiss.
The diamond has been found in wide
ly separated parts of the world. Among
these. Central India, Sumatra. B ,rneo.
the Ural Mountains, California, Braz |,
the Cape of Good Hope and China have
been named, in their several times, as
principal localities. while it might be
hard to enumerate all the minor sites.
The Greeks say it was found in Ethio-
pia. The Indian mines are certainly
of very high antiquity, for
the stones are mentioned in the
"Mahabaratta,' and the Romans OBJ.
tanned their supplies chiefly from the
mines of Jumalpoor, in Bengal. The
Indian mines are scattered along the
centre of the peninsula, through ten
degrees of latitude, from near the south
ern bank of the Ganges in latitude %
deg. to latitude Is deg. in the Madras
L ICoiutuCJs 1HC Iuc5g ldHluuo ohCS WCtC q
those of Golconda, in the Nizam's Terri.
tory, which were called after the city
and fort of that name, where was the
market to which they were brought, al.
though none of them were found there
or in the neighborhood. Nothing of
the city is left, and the mines have
fallen into neglect; but when Tuvernler
visited the district, in 1886, he found
twenty.three mines in operation, en-
ploying sixty thousand men and women,
girls aud boys, and producing some won.
derfully large and fine stones.
The mining district between the God
avery aud the Mahanadi-the Adams
river of the ancients, where it was said,
"they find diamonds in nquantities" was
also visited by Tuvernier 10 1865. Fke
whole population was then accustomed
to explore the river bed in the late VIM
ter, when the water W as low, and there
was no work in the fields, and wash the
diamonds from the sand Popular Sci.
ence Monthly.